Trends shaping Emergency Medical Services in 2018

ESO Solutions, the leading data and software company serving emergency medical services, fire departments, and hospitals, shared the trends it predicts will have the biggest impact on EMS organizations in 2018. According to Brent Myers, MD, Senior Medical Consultant at ESO, “The most successful EMS organizations will be the ones that leverage data and integrate and share information with other providers. During the year, this trend will have an increasing impact on how shared decision-making changes and evolves.”

Shared decision-making will continue to evolve:
Access to increasingly richer data will influence decision-making about patient care. As electronic patient care records (ePCR) software continues to mature, paramedics and other prehospital medical professionals will have a fuller picture of a patient’s medical history, ensuring that patients receive the right attention in the field and get to the right hospital for the right treatment.

EMS will increasingly play a role in value-based purchasing:
Although value-based purchasing has been implemented across hospitals, it has yet to come to EMS directly. Still, the scrutiny around quality of care that value-based purchasing brings to hospitals will increasingly impact EMS indirectly. As hospitals seek to ensure maximum reimbursement for services rendered, they will increasingly look to EMS as a partner to steer patients to the most cost-effective and appropriate care venue.

EMS organizations will increasingly discover value in data:
The proliferation in EMS of both patient-care and operational data will continue to accelerate. Organizations that tap into this data will be able to operate more efficiently, as well as demonstrate the value they bring to their communities and the healthcare system. Organizations will discover greater value in integrated data that incorporates information from multiple sources, such as patient demographic and outcomes data from hospitals.

“Organizations that stay informed about these trends, especially the ones that leverage data and analytics to truly understand ROI and outcomes, will have an advantage over organizations that don’t,” added Myers. “That advantage will become even more significant as EMS gets smarter and more predictive with the information at their disposal.”